Brit Folk

The Watersons, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Kate Rusby, Jake Bugg, The Unthanks

Vashti Bunyan on Soho, silence and finding her voice

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Fragile.

The word has been used to describe Vashti Bunyan so often over the years you wouldn’t be surprised to find her picture if you looked the word up in a dictionary. It’s been used about her voice – a delicate, slight yet utterly beautiful thing – and it’s been used about the woman, or at least the girl she was. The girl who was once signed up by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. The girl who in 1970 released an album, Just Another Diamond Day, that nobody bought, a failure that crushed her will to make music for decades and saw her disappear in a horse and cart to the wilds of Scotland and Ireland. A fresh peach who was bruised by life. […]

Read the Full Story: Vashti Bunyan on Soho, silence and finding her voice (From HeraldScotland)

An emerging British folk music scene: archive, 15 October 1963 

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The Guardian, 15 October 1963: The modest boomlet is showing every sign of turning into a super colossal folkburger, with plenty of chips on every plate and juice there for the squeezing

There has been a minor folk-song boom for as long as most addicts can remember. Nothing spectacular, nothing bloated, but steady, devoted, sure – a lasting, rippling tide of interest.

It started in the mid-fifties when skiffle’s bubble burst. Skiffle was really a convenient compromise, folksy and portentous enough to engross those repulsed by rock’s simpleton thumps but needing scant talent to bolster its pretensions. Anyone could expel a nasal screech or scrape a washboard but, long ago and far away, Leadbelly first plucked out the tune; and that made it all respectable. […]

 

Full Story at: An emerging British folk music scene: archive, 15 October 1963 | Music | The Guardian

BBC Podcast: The Voices of Annie Briggs

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An intimate portrait of the iconic but elusive English folksinger Annie Briggs.

Annie Briggs was a leading figure in the English folk revival of the early 1960’s, inspiring Bert Jansch (famously, in Blackwater Side), Sandy Denny, The Watersons and many more. But she was a restless spirit, traveling through the British Isles and Ireland, finding songs and living close to the earth. 

Listen to the 27 minute podcast, below